Terrorists’ Actions Don’t Stop Memphis Crawfish Festival Goers

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(Memphis) The aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing trickled to the Mid-South where families came out to counter-act terrorist actions.

Hot, steaming fresh mud-bugs coupled with the sounds of The Bluff City drew a large crowd at the annual Rajun Cajun Crawfish Festival on Beale.

Sales from twenty thousand pounds of crawfish are extremely important to Porter Leath.

“We have 800 people in preschool. We feed 750 children and we have children in custody and in children in residential care,” said Mike Warr with Porter Leath and festival organizer.

This year’s festival for families enjoying a beautiful, cool spring day, comes less than a week after terrorists bombed the Boston Marathon.

Warr says the threat crossed his mind in final set-up stages, but he felt safe after talking with police about they were looking out for.

“We are just dependent on that Al Qaeda folks probably don’t eat crawfish and we hope they don’t show up,” said Warr.

People entered the crawfish festival the same way they’ve done for years, they did it without going through a security screening.

That didn’t bother Kiffany Brown, who has never been to the festival, but chose to come this year in light of the bombings.

She feels secure in the presence of the two dozen Memphis police officers, “I know they are doing everything they possibly can to keep us safe."

Six year-old Addison has been to the crawfish fest every year and says she would have been sad if her parents chose not to bring her again, “It wouldn’t be fun, because we wouldn’t get to do all this fun."

Her parents thought about not coming, but they did anyway, for the same reason Boston fan, Donnie Culver, and his family showed up.

They didn’t want to let terrorists break family tradition.

“We have to keep moving forward. We can’t let something like that stop any of us. It’s what America is about,” said Culver.

Warr tells News Channel 3, the only problems the festival has had in the past, came from attendees getting sick in the heat.